REGISTER to attend the event on the evening of December 4, at the Prince Charles Cinema in London, to see the 10 best entries shown on the big screen with a full lineup of guest speakers and cinema presentations. Please note : Entries to show your films are now closed but we still have a few seats available.

When I announced the Movie Machine Digital Cinema Festival in late October, I had no idea what the response would be. Would there be any entries – was there any appetite for this kind of thing in the modern world.

I’m pleased to say we have had a fantastic response with entries from all over the world: movie submissions from the UK,USA, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Canada, Australia, from far flung corners of the world to where one would least expect to find passionate filmmakers, yet the same passion for filmmaking exists everywhere. This is what is obvious from the movies submitted.

And there is good content to view! We have many films of seriously high quality, running between 1 and 5 minutes.

On the night of Dec. 4 at the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square, London we will show the 10 best films.

The judges, there are 5 in total, are busy watching, viewing and putting in their verdict for each of the films. The films are judged on cinematic merits including execution of story, camerawork, lighting, use of sound and editing technique.

The winner of the festival will be announced the evening of December 4, at the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square, London.

1st Prize for best film is a Blackmagic Cinema Camera, courtesy of Holdan.

A rather controversial plugin has just been announced by CINEFLARE, “hand held” is a plugin that aims to make you footage look more…amateurish, at least thats one of the few comments that underpin the You Tube video.

“So bad. All that hard work to make something look like no thought was put into the camera work.”

“Not really sure about this one… I can just drop my GlideCam and shoot by hand if that’s the effect I want. I can see the “trendiness” if you’re shooting a music video or maybe a scene for a movie, but then again, you can just shoot it that way. Not for me.”

Its not often a plugin creates a string of negative comments like these but in my opinion its all about the way you apply the plugin, some of the whip pans look very useful but to the professional cameraman this plugin has the ability to make your work look poor and thats the heart of the problem.

You get a hip and so called trendy “director” in the edit suite with a less experienced editor and all your hard work could look less than professional and once its out there for all to see theres nothing you can do about it.

Professional cameramen and women are very protective and guarded when it comes to their creative work so lets hope anyone who buys “hand held” uses it sparingly, at $49 its not going to break the bank.

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You agree to charity work then panic “how am I going to cover a non paying event”…simple it may be non paying for the charity but professional cameramen or should I say reliable cameramen don’t come for nothing, you take a hit and get on with it. This was for a great charity called “Maggies” a charity that deals with cancer for both the patient and the carer.

The lads and two JVC 600 series camcorders, one Canon C300 for a locked off wide shot (11mm) and a roving Lumix GH3.

The JVCs worked well together giving us a good clean shot in low light at 0dB, Scott was using the Manfrotto 504HD, the C300 was on the stage on a Millar Solo ENG tripod with a Compact 25 head, Sean was using his JVC 600 on a Manfrotto 501 HDV and I had the Lumix GH3 and a light weight DSLR Manfrotto 500AH head.

The magic happened back at base when I was trying out the new multicam in FCPX for the first time. You choose your footage and by right clicking you are given an option to use multicam, FCPX then sorts out the various shots via their sound tracks and all camcorders are synced together…works like a charm…fantastic.

You have to be aware of the limitations of multicam even although I let all three cameras record simultaneously, at the editing stage it was not necessary. My advice is to film each dance then pause, this saves on card space but FCPX is far happier and accurate with a single dance than a whole one hours worth of footage.

The one thing that struck me was how close all three cameras matched, obviously the two JVCs were matched but the Canon and Panasonic both matched the JVCs without any grading !

Below is a small part of the 4 camera shoot just to let you see how cool multicam is in FCPX, my apologies for the crap sound I was given a “clean” feed from the desk only to discover it was far from clean !

Note : For anyone who was at the evening and wants a copy of the 43mins DVD you can email me your details to smallvideo@mac.com the cost is £10 includes 1st class postage.

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Why not treat yourself to a 4K experience at H Preston Media today. Watch 4K pictures on the new Sony 55″ KD55 X900 5A (£3199 better than Curry’s) plus the Sony FDR-AX1 4K camera at (£3799). Remember you can get 12 months interest free credit on all purchases over £500 at H Preston Media. The XDCAM version is coming in next week so don’t delay if you need a fantastic 10bit run and gun 2K/4K camcorder this is the choice.

I bumped into Dan during IBC he was also doing interviews in the Teradek studio, this interview with Mr Onda global manager for Canon EOS is very informative and gives us an insight as to Canon’s thoughts for EOS Cinema products along with a very impressive demonstration of the new dual pixel autofocus paid upgrade available for the C100. It’s about 25m long but keep watching the new autofocus using a Canon 50mm f1.2 L lens is very impressive.

I emailed my Canon tech rep about the upgrade “Will the new dual pixel focus (paid upgrade) be available in future new C100s or will it always be a paid upgrade.”

Canon “It won’t come as standard in future cameras as far as I am aware and will always be a paid upgrade”

Personally I think this is a bit short sighted of Canon not to implement this into future C100’s as it vastly improves what can only be described as an average autofocus as standard.

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Just to let you see first impressions from Panasonic’s new AC8 shoulder mount camcorder.

(100% from the 1920 x 1080 50P frame) This camcorder is using a new MOS sensor and so far I am very impressed with the pictures.

Tonight I will be putting it through it’s paces with a 2 hour charity ball in the heart of Glasgow. Stuart will be given the task of using the AC8 for the evening to snatch cutaways and give me his overall impressions of the new Panasonic Full HD camcorder.

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I should be getting one of the new shoulder mount Full-HD 1080P AVCCAM camcorders, the AG-AC8 from Panasonic. This camcorder should fit the bill for event, education, media training and emergency services training, so on Friday night I will hand it over to Stuart one of my freelance cameramen to give it a run through during a charity night in aid of “maggie’s” cancer charity.

H Preston Media have this camcorder priced at £1,070 a cracking price, I hope to get a video produced by the end of next week.

Holdan : “An unbelievable price for a full HD shoulder-mount camcorder with lots of professional features. It’s a great introduction to handling a fuller size system and will be of interest to videographers, the webstreaming community and education users.”

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Canon like Panasonic are rapidly loosing their position when it comes to large sensor cameras, Canon need to pull a 4K/2K recordable Super 35mm camera out of the bag ASAP.

Sony are leaving everyone standing with the F5/55 cameras and the new V2 firmware implementing 240fps slow motion feature in 2K is an even bigger incentive to buy into the Sony F5.

Slow-mo may be a bit of a gimmick but if you have the choice of having it or not having it comparing two similar spec cameras you would choose the camera that had it.

Sonys F55 has internal 4K recording as does the Canon EOS 1Dc , why on earth the C500 never had the facility to capture 4K internally is a mystery to all of us, hence the poor uptake on the C500.

1080 50p is a must for any new line of Canon Cinema cameras as once again Sony have pipped them at the post with most of their Pro line up having 1080 50p, even the NX-30.

XLRs on board the camera is another essential for a new C700s camera as the C300/500 is a mess, as is an adjustable Hi-Res viewfinder like the Alphatron, DPs are getting fed up with cameras that compromise the shoot and there is nothing worse than a crap viewfinder as seen on the C100.

Lastly if Sony can produce a 4:2:2 16bit RAW camera then Canon need to match it !